I think I’ve reached some sort of geek or nerd Nirvana. I know that when my housemates come back from their various days, they’re going to look at me blankly and wonder what the hell I’m on about… and in their defense, what the hell am I on about? I’ve just cleared my Inbox for the first time since I can remember… now, before we go getting all hot under the collar, I mean my Inbox folder, not the !_DMZ folder that I created on the 27th of March 2006, to draw a line in the sand and help me to deal with the more immediate, pressing need of putting food on the table and making sure that I had a place to sleep…

Taking care of first things first…
A while ago I started reading all sorts of things to help me to become more productive – my reasoning was that if I could be more productive, then I could do more, and in being able to do more, I could extract another few ounces from life and hey, work harder!!!

But as I’ve grown a little older, a little wiser, and a little crankier, I’ve realised that I don’t actually want to work harder, I want to work smarter…

Hey, when you die, do you think that you’ll wish you worked harder during your life, or that you’d spent more time with your loved ones, or simply done the things that you always wanted to… like go to Nepal, or take photos at the Running of the Bulls (which won’t happen this year ‘cos Walter and I made a pact to go together, and this year he just can’t make it so we’ll have to go next year) or go watch killer whales frolick in Puget sound before they go killing, ‘um, seals…

The Pickle Jar Theory
See, the thing I’ve realised at my advanced age of almost 29, is that there are certain fundamentals that need doing – like eating and sleeping, which have knock-on needs, like working and living somewhere where you can sleep… – which are more important than anything else…

But this is the problem – since SxSWi earlier this year, pretty much everything has been about keeping my head above water, catching up with sleep, doing client work, getting the laptop fixed, spending more time with my Mom than I have in about 10 years, writing code…. all the big pickles in my Jar of Life, which conversely means that I haven’t been able to deal with the little Pickles, many of which were sitting in my Inbox just waiting to be done…

Hence the absolute delight I’m feeling right now…
In the last two days I’ve managed to go from 152 accumulated unanswered emails in my Inbox folder (those are just the ones that I’ve let be since the 27th March 2006), to 0… and this makes me really happy. The really worrying thing however, is that if I get replies to just a small percentage of them, I’m already going to be hitting an email “answer deficit”!

But the fat lady hasn’t sung yet…
I’ve still got 398 emails in my !_DMZ folder, many of which will be obsolete by now, but nonetheless; and 33 open tabs in Firefox, which are all waiting blog posts of some sort (the sessionsaver and tab mix plus firefox extensions are really handy folks); so there is still work to be done….

But at least when I get to work on Tuesday morning (we’ve got a long weekend here in the UK) there will only be current emails waiting for me, and I won’t have that sinking feeling of unanswered emails nagging at me whenever I open my Inbox…

So, without further ado, I bid you adieu, to crack on with that !_DMZ folder of mine